Backlink building company: the three delivery models and how to vet one

A backlink building company gets other websites to link to yours, and there are only three ways it can do that: earn an editorial link by giving a publisher something worth covering, pay for a placement on somebody else's site, or pay to have a link inserted into a page that already exists. Google's spam policies describe exchanging money or goods for links that pass ranking signals as a link scheme, so the model your supplier uses is the most important thing on the contract. Ask which of the three they do, in writing, before anything else.

Good suppliers in this category answer that question happily and in detail. A supplier who will not name the model, or who describes the work only as outreach, is the one to be careful with.

The three models

Model	How the link appears	What it costs you if it goes wrong	When it fits
Digital PR and earned outreach	A journalist, blogger or industry site covers something you made or said, and links because the link is useful to their reader	Little, because the link was earned rather than bought	Any business with data, expertise or a genuine story
Paid placements and guest post networks	An article is published on another site with your link in it, in exchange for payment	These are the arrangements Google's policies describe as link schemes, and the sites that sell them most openly are the ones most likely to lose their value	Rarely, and never as the whole programme
Link insertions, also sold as niche edits	Your link is added into an existing published article for a fee	Same exposure as above, with the added problem that the page was never written about you	Not a foundation you would want to build on

The honest summary is that the first model is slow, costs more per link and keeps working. The other two are fast, cheap per link, and the value evaporates when the host site is reassessed. If somebody is selling you a monthly quota of links at a fixed rate, you are buying one of the second two, whatever the proposal calls it.

What a proper engagement produces each month

• A target page list. The specific URLs the links are meant to help, chosen because they make money, not because they are easy.
• An asset or an angle. Something a publisher would want: original data, a tool, a survey, a strong opinion from a named expert, a local story.
• A named prospect list with the reason each site would plausibly care.
• Outreach you can read. Ask to see the actual emails. If you would delete them, so will the recipient. For what works, see backlink email templates.
• A report of live links with the URL, the anchor text, whether it is followed, and the date it went live.
• Reclamation work, which is the cheapest source of links most businesses have: unlinked brand mentions, broken links to pages you removed, and links lost in a redesign.

The vetting questions

1. Which of the three models do you use, and what share of the links comes from each?
2. Can I see five links you placed in the last ninety days, live, in my sector or an adjacent one?
3. Who writes the outreach, and may I read the last ten emails sent for another client with names removed?
4. Do you pay publishers? If so, for what exactly?
5. How do you choose target sites, and what do you do when a site asks for a fee?
6. What happens to a link that disappears in the first six months?
7. Who owns the assets you create, and what happens to them when we part?
8. How many links do you expect per month, and how did you arrive at that number?
9. Will you work to the pages we nominate, or only to the home page?
10. What would make you tell us to stop and fix the site first?

That last question separates the two kinds of supplier. Links pointed at a weak page rarely move anything, and a supplier who will say so is one worth having.

Pricing shapes, and what each one encourages

• Per link. Simple to compare and it pushes volume over quality, because the supplier is paid for a count. If you use it, define minimum standards for the linking page in the contract.
• Monthly retainer. Suits digital PR, where one good campaign can produce many links and the next may produce few. Ask what the retainer buys when nothing lands.
• Per campaign. A fixed fee for an asset plus an outreach push. The most honest shape for earned links.
• Performance based. Workable only with a written definition of a qualifying link, otherwise you will argue about every invoice.

Rates in this market differ by country and by model, so collect three current proposals and compare the models before the numbers. For how agency fees are published more broadly, see marketing agency pricing.

Warnings worth acting on

Walk away from a proposal that offers a guaranteed placement on a named high authority site, a fixed number of links at a fixed domain rating, a private network of sites the supplier happens to own, or anything described as safe because the links are hidden in older articles. Be wary of reports that count links the supplier cannot show you live, and of any arrangement where the deliverable is a score rather than a page. For the wider picture of which tactics hold up, see backlink strategy.

What to do before you hire anybody

Three jobs cost nothing and raise the return on everything a supplier does afterwards.

• Pick the pages. Decide the five URLs that matter commercially. Links to a blog post that sells nothing are a kindness to your blog.
• Build one thing worth citing. A dataset from your own operations, a calculator, a genuinely complete guide to the awkward part of your category. Without this, outreach has nothing to offer.
• Fix internal links first. Most sites have more unused strength inside them than any campaign will add. See internal linking.

Measuring the engagement

Measure	Where from	What good looks like
New referring domains to target pages	Backlink tool, filtered to those URLs	A steady monthly count, with on subject sites
Referral visits from new links	Analytics	Small but non zero. A link nobody clicks is a weaker link
Position of target pages	Search Console, by query and page	Movement on the queries those pages target, over a quarter
Cost per on subject referring domain	Your invoice divided by the count you accept	A number you can compare between suppliers honestly

This page covers buying link building from a supplier. For the tactics themselves, see the backlink strategy guide above. For checking a profile with a tool, see what is a backlink.

What gets asked about backlink building company

How many links do I need?

Look at the referring domain counts of the pages currently ranking for your three most valuable queries, and use that range as the target. The shape of the profile, meaning relevance and variety, matters more than the count.

Is paying for a guest post against Google's rules?

Google's spam policies treat exchanging money for links that pass ranking signals as a link scheme, and the documented way to publish paid content safely is to mark the links with the sponsored attribute, which means they pass no ranking value. That is a reasonable way to buy advertising and a poor way to buy rankings.

How long before links show an effect?

Allow one to three months for Google to find and weigh new links, and a quarter before you judge a campaign. Links to a page that already ranks on page two move fastest.

Should the links point at my home page?

Mostly no. Point them at the pages you want to rank, with a share going to the home page naturally. A profile where everything points at one URL looks exactly like what it is.

Can I do this in house instead?

Yes, and many companies get better results that way, because the expertise and the relationships are already inside the building. One person for two days a month on reclamation and genuine outreach beats a cheap external quota.

Ask the assistant who sells links, then read the answer

Buyers vetting a link building supplier now often start by asking an assistant who is reputable, and the replies repeat whichever firms are discussed most credibly in articles and forums. That is its own kind of reference check, and one you can run in a minute before the call.

If you sell this work, run it on yourself too. AI Knows Us records the firms named across the major assistants for questions such as the best link building company, along with the sources behind each name.